The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace

5. If this was yesterday just, that life eternal is due to Adam for his work before God made it just and due, then from Eternity and before any decree of God it was just and due; Certainly, God, ⟨p. 24⟩upon the same reason, was debtor, to make such a Covenant, that was just, before he made it just. And this is no Covenant of God, for God, not making the justice of the Covenant, and the ju•t connection between work and wage, he cannot be the Author of the Covenant: But neither is Adam the Author of the justice, nor of the just Covenant: Upon the same ground, it was then an everlasting justice without and before God from Eternitie. Non datur justum prius primo justo.

5. If this was yesterday just, that life eternall is due to Adam for his work before God made it just and due, then from Eternitie and before any decree of God it was just and due; Certainlie, God, ⟨p. 24⟩upon the same reason, was debtour, to make such a Covenant, that was just, before he made it just. And this is no Covenant of God, for God, not making the justice of the Covenant, and the ju•t connexion between work and wadge, he cannot be the Author of the Covenant: But neither is Adam the Author of the justice, nor of the just Covenant: Upon the same ground, it was then an everlasting justice without and before God from Eternitie. Non datur justum prius primo justo.

6. If God did more for Adam, then he can recompense God for it,¹ as the Father hath done to the Son, then he could not merit at the hand of God: But God did more to Adam in giving to him being, faculties, mind, will, affections, power, habits, his blessed Image, then Adam can never be in a condition, in which he can recompense God, or give him more annual and usury, in his acting of obedience, then the stock was he received in proportion. As the Son can never give the Father, in recompense, so much or the captive ransomed from death, can never give to his ransom payer, who bought him so much, as the one and the other shall no more be under an obligation, and debt of love and service to father and ransomer then to a stranger that they never knew: Nor could Adam thus be freed of God, so as he should be owing nothing to him. If any say, God may freely forgive all this obligation and debt: To which Bradwardine Answers well: 1. The forgiving of the debt, when the debtor hath nothing to pay is a greater debt taken on. 2. God (saith he) may forgive so in regard of actual obligation, that he is not oblidged ad aliquid faciendum sub poena peccati, to do any thing under the pain or punishment of sin, as the hireling is obliged to work, when he hath made a Covenant to work, and so we are not obliged to do, as much as we can for God. But in regard of habitual obligation, God cannot forgive the debt, that the reasonable creature owes to God, for so he might dispense with this, that the reasonable creature owe no obedience to God, suppose he should command it, which is impossible.